'After leaving the door open to the United States and its European allies to destroy Libya from the air for seven brutal months, Russia is now pressing for an investigation of civilian casualties inflicted by NATO. The Russians, along with the Chinese, abstained from voting on the infamous United Nations Security Council resolution establishing a “no-fly” zone over Libya, ostensibly to protect civilians, a legal fig leaf that NATO interpreted as a go-ahead to batter Libya with 7,700 bombs and missiles. Incredibly, NATO’s secretary general proclaimed in November that no civilian casualties had resulted – that is, no confirmed civilian casualties.'
Link:http://www.pri.org/stories/world/africa/investigation-uncovers-unacknowledged-civilian-casualties-from-nato-s-libyan-strikes-7528.html

NATO’s outrageous claim that no civilians were killed in the 7-month air war against Libya has been challenged by Russia and, in a very modest way, the New York Times. “NATO’s policy of refusing to investigate civilian deaths is evidence on its face of a depraved disregard for civilian lives and the intention to avoid prosecution for crimes against civilians.” The Times recent concern over Libyan victims of NATO bombing lacks credibility, given its wildly biased reporting of the war. “Thousands of black Libyan citizens and African migrant workers are dead at least partially as a result of western media lies.”
Link:http://blackagendareport.com/content/natos-depraved-disregard-libyan-civilian-casualties

"The unspoken objective [in bombing Libya] is to destroy Libya’s economy and to prevent it from developing as a nation-state. This is why schools and universities, hospitals, shipyards, factories, not to mention residential areas, have been the target of NATO bombings."_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

'There is strong evidence that NATO carried out war crimes in its eight-month war for regime-change in Libya, according to a report released Thursday by Middle East human rights groups. The United Nations resolution authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect civilians was utilized as the justification for military actions against civilian targets in which many Libyans were killed and wounded, according to the groups’ investigation.

Not really sure what is up the referenced film below. It is very poor as far as film making goes. One name associated with it does not exist etc... Seems kind of over the top...anyway I assume the deaths linked to it and the outrage portrayed in the mainstream media are real. Perhaps the 'Arabs' doing the deeds are bad actors too. Who knows? Actually who really cares anymore. The anti-Arab thing is getting really tired as well as the boogey man themed oil rape peep show is starting to piss me off. Gasoline up 13 cents a litre in Montreal, etc.... That is what matters. Guess it got a headline and only cost 4 Diplomatic small fish?

'The US ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a US - made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year's uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one US consular official. The building was evacuated.' 6th US embassy official to die on the job.

"The movie, "Innocence of Muslims," that mocks and insults the Prophet Muhammad caused demonstrators to attack a US consulate in Libya, killing one American, and breached the walls of the US Embassy in Cairo. Angry protests over the film by a US producer, directed and produced by an Israeli-American real-estate developer who characterized it as a political effort to call attention to the hypocrisies of Islam. It has been promoted by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of Qurans previously sparked deadly riots around the world."

Again I am letting my conspiracy mind loose. Just read a reader's letter in the Glenn Greenwald Guardian column asking why or how so quickly would protesters target the ambassador. Did they go after the usual American targets first like McDonalds or KFC?

'Two years after the end of the US-NATO war in Libya, thousands in the North African country remain imprisoned without charges and are being subjected to systematic torture, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations.

The report, entitled “Torture and deaths in detention in Libya” recorded 27 cases in which the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has gathered evidence substantiating that detainees have been tortured to death. The agency knows of many other cases that it has not been able to investigate. At least 11 of the documented torture deaths took place during the first half of this year. All of the known deaths this year are reported to have taken place in “detention centres under the nominal authority of the government but effectively under the authority of armed brigades.” There are an estimated 8,000 individuals held in these centers. Those who are arrested disappear into the network of detention and torture centers, without their families knowing their whereabouts. An unknown number are being kept prisoner by armed militias in secret sites ranging from apartments to farms and former government offices.

Grabbed from the streets, their workplaces or homes without any evidence presented against them, many of these prisoners have been subjected to arbitrary and indefinite detention as well as torture for nothing more than the color of their skin—black Libyans and other Africans have been mercilessly repressed by the pro-NATO “rebels”—or tribal affiliation. “Some have been detained apparently on the basis of belonging to certain tribal or ethnic groups, including Warfalla, Tawergha, and Mashashia, as these groups are collectively perceived by some as having supported the former regime. Given the arbitrary nature of the arrests and lack of judicial oversight, cases of personal score-settling are not uncommon,” the report states.

Security conditions in Libya are so bad that it was impossible for UN personnel to investigate conditions at detention centers in the eastern part of the country. The report likewise acknowledges that throughout the country “armed brigades remain in effective control of territory and State functions, including detention and interrogation, and many have swelled their ranks since” the US-NATO war for regime change.

Most of the detention facilities visited by the UN investigators, according to the report, are formally under the control of the centralized state, but this control is “often little more than nominal,” with real power being exercised by armed militias, many of them Islamist groups, from which the prison guards are drawn.

The brutalization of detainees, virtually none of whom have been charged with any crime outside of allegedly supporting the former regime of murdered Libyan head of state Muammar Gaddafi, has become so endemic that the UN agency warned of “a danger that torture will become institutionalized within the new Libya.”

The UN investigators reported that prisoners had told them “they were constrained in contorted positions; beaten on the soles of their feet (falaqa); beaten all over the body with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains, bars and wooden sticks; and given electric shocks with live wires or taser-like weapons. Several said they were hanged upside down and beaten for hours, burned with cigarettes, had hot liquids poured on them, and were exposed to burning metals.”
...'

'US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel proclaimed Sunday that two covert operations mounted by US Special Forces in Libya and Somalia over the weekend “send a strong message to the world that the United States will spare no effort to hold terrorists accountable, no matter where they hide or how long they evade justice.”

Far from strong, upon any serious examination, the message sent by these operations is decidedly murky.

The abduction in Libya of alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Liby and the abortive Navy Seal raid on a leader of the Al Shabab Islamist militia in Somalia—called off after it encountered stiff resistance—are being treated by the US media as some monumental new battle in the never-ending global war on terror. Al-Liby, who has been indicted in a US court on charges related to the preparation of the 1998 terror bombings at the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in which 224 people died, is reportedly being held on a US warship in the Mediterranean—beyond the reach of civilian courts and laws and being subjected to unknown methods of interrogation.

Counter-terrorism experts, ex-agents, and former cabinet members are being paraded before the television cameras in an attempt to rope in the American public, implicating it in another criminal operation by Washington. For all of the blather from these experts, however, on one thing they are totally silent: the extraordinary history of al-Liby, the target of the US raid. A review of his career points to not some implacable struggle between mortal enemies, but rather a falling out between intimate partners. It is no exaggeration to suggest that Mr. al-Liby knows some of those who planned his capture on a first-name basis. His biography provides a glimpse into the bizarre and frightening world of the CIA and its secret wars, dirty tricks and global murders.

Al-Liby joined Al Qaeda when it was fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s, providing the foot soldiers for a covert CIA-organized war for regime change against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul. At the time, then-US President Ronald Reagan hailed al-Liby and his fellow right-wing Islamist fighters as the “moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers,” while the US government poured some $10 billion into financing the war. This relationship was not merely Reagan’s innovation. For decades before, US imperialism had promoted reactionary Islamist organizations to further US interests and combat socialist and left-nationalist influence in the Middle East and beyond. These layers provided the shock troops for CIA-orchestrated coups in Iran, Indonesia and elsewhere. After the Afghan war, al-Liby reportedly followed Bin Laden to Sudan, where he continued to enjoy US and Western backing. It was during this period of the 1990s that Al Qaeda funneled Islamist fighters into Bosnia to go into battle for the US-backed Bosnian Muslim regime. In 1993, Bin Laden received Bosnian citizenship and a Bosnian passport. Al Qaeda terrorists were also sent into Kosovo to join the separatist movement against Serbia, which by 1999 was backed by a full-scale US-NATO air war.

In 1995, Sudan forced Bin Laden to send his Libyan followers out of the country in response to pressure from Libya’s head of state, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Shortly afterwards, Bin Laden himself would also be asked to leave, as Sudan faced pressure from Egypt, where an Al Qaeda-affiliated group had attempted to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak.

While Bin Laden went to Afghanistan, al-Liby found political asylum in the United Kingdom, Washington’s closest ally, on the grounds that he would face persecution in Libya. In 2002, it was revealed that six years earlier al-Liby had been a key figure in a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group cell that was paid large sums of money by the British intelligence service, MI6, for an abortive plot to assassinate Gaddafi.

For nearly two years after the African embassy bombings, al-Liby was able to continue living in the UK, fleeing only in May of 2000 around the time he and 20 other Al Qaeda operatives were indicted in a Manhattan federal court as co-defendants of Osama in the African terrorist attacks. He was placed on the FBI’s “most wanted” list. After a decade as a wanted terrorist, al-Liby returned to Libya in 2011 and once again was transformed into a US-backed “freedom fighter,” joining one of the Islamist brigades that served as proxy troops for the US-NATO war for regime change.

Why, two years after the toppling and assassination of Gaddafi, al-Liby has been snatched off the streets of Tripoli is by no means clear. His presence there was known to Washington from even before the war began. It is, however, part of a pattern alternating between close collaboration and falling out between the US intelligence apparatus and Al Qaeda. This is a pattern that goes a long way to explaining how the 9/11 terror attacks could take place—i.e., how Al Qaeda operatives known to the CIA could freely enter the US, take flying courses, and prepare the mayhem of September 11, 2001. This same phenomenon was seen in the September 11, 2012 Al Qaeda assault on US diplomatic and CIA facilities in the eastern Libyan port city of Benghazi, in which the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans lost their lives. Stevens had played the instrumental role in coordinating US military action with operations of Islamists like al-Liby.

In the aftermath of the war, the CIA established a major secret station in Benghazi for the purpose of shipping arms stockpiles to similar elements being employed in the war for regime change in Syria. Something caused the relationship to sour, likely involving resentments among the Islamist militias that they had not been adequately compensated by their American patrons in terms of money or power.
...'_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha

Libya’s capital city Tripoli was at a virtual standstill yesterday. Most of Tripoli’s businesses, schools and public sector workers went out on strike, demanding that militias leave the city.

A 48-hour state of emergency was declared Saturday. Tripoli saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with at least 45 people killed in demonstrations on Friday and Saturday. Residents set up checkpoints and barricades of metal, wood and tires to protect their neighbourhoods. There is growing anger towards both the Islamist proxies the United States used to topple the Gaddafi regime—which have used extortion, assassination, kidnappings, imprisonment and torture to enrich themselves—and the neo-colonial government of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.

On Friday, the Misrata militia fired on thousands of demonstrators, including women and children, killing 43 and wounding over 500. The demonstrators were calling for the government to rein in the militias as they marched to the Misrata brigades’ headquarters at Ghargour. The central government’s weak forces only arrived long after the violence erupted. Witnesses said anti-aircraft weapons were fired at peaceful demonstrators carrying white flags and placards. Sadat al-Badri—the president of Tripoli’s city council, which called the protest—said the demonstrators were unarmed and had been shot at from inside the militia headquarters. Taher Basha Agha, the Misrata militia’s chief at Ghargour, replied that the protesters were armed and that snipers on rooftops fired first, suggesting action by agent provocateurs. He rejected calls to leave the capital before the General National Council (GNC) had agreed a new constitution and a new state had been established.

At first Zeidan said that armed demonstrators were involved in the clashes and that security forces had not intervened “so as not to complicate the situation,” causing enormous anger. He later retracted this, stating that the protest march was “peaceful.”

Subsequently, armed men, including a militia called the Shield of Libya, arrived, set fire to the Misrata brigade’s headquarters and premises, and evicted them.

On Saturday, clashes broke out between local militias and the Misrata brigades in Tajoura, a Tripoli suburb, when armed reinforcements from Misrata attempted to enter the city from the east. Misrata fighters attacked an army barracks, setting off clashes in which one person was killed and eight wounded. These events followed armed clashes in Tripoli last week between rival militias that killed three people and wounded 20.

The events highlight the Washington-installed government’s political isolation, its inability to control the hundreds of armed militias, and mounting political and economic problems on all fronts.

The lavish funding of Islamists by Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and NATO to overthrow the Gaddafi regime has left Libya awash with weapons and heavily armed militias, turning the country into a base of regional terrorist groups and an exporter of arms and “Jihadists” to Syria. It has led to constant clashes between rival ethnic and tribal based militias as they fight over land and resources. With some members of the tribes living across the southern border in Niger and Chad, the violence has spread to Libya’s neighbours.

Lacking a real national army, the government cannot control its borders, which criminal gangs trading narcotics, arms and desperate Africans seeking sanctuary in Europe cross with impunity. Libya’s vast deserts have become a sanctuary for Al Qaeda-linked outfits fleeing French forces occupying Mali. (By design?)

Oil production has plummeted from 1.6 million bpd to 150,000 bpd, and exports to just 80,000 bpd. More than $6.43 billion in revenues have been lost due to violence, strikes demanding jobs and higher wages, and the blockading of the oil ports by militias. This threatens Europe’s oil security, as Libya is Europe’s largest single oil supplier. (By design?)

ON MAY 17th Libya declared a no-fly zone aimed at parts of its own air force after units loyal to a renegade former general carried out an assault in the eastern city of Benghazi. Sections of the army and the air force joined them to attack state-funded militias that they deem terrorists, but which the central government calls "revolutionaries". Health ministry officials say 70 people died in the most intensive fighting since the 2011 civil war.

Heading the rogue force is Khalifa Hiftar, a former general who led rebel units in the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi. He has emerged as the loudest critic of Libya's new rulers. In February he appeared on television, wearing a uniform festooned with medals, to accuse the national congress, Libya’s proto-parliament, of being dominated by Islamists and call for its replacement by an ill-defined commission. Since then he has been gathering support among disaffected elements of the armed forces, notably the air force. On the morning of May 16th he took action.

Jets and helicopters under his command pounded militia bases in Benghazi and fighting raged. Units of the special forces joined Mr Hiftar even as their commanders professed to be neutral. Elsewhere in eastern Libya, some army units and tribal militias leapt into action, mainly to carry out score-settling against Islamists whom they blame for a wave of assassinations over the past two years. In Tripoli, the capital, a Zintan militia allied with Mr Hiftar attacked a militia base in the city’s suburbs.

The government, weak and caught on the hoof, denounced the operation as a “coup”. Abdullah al-Thinni, the acting prime minister, called Mr Hiftar’s forces “outlaws”. But the authorities' later declaration of a no-fly zone for Benghazi, believed to be the first time a state has made such an order against its own air force, went ignored. Hours later air force jets bombed the Benghazi-based radio station of Ansar al-Sharia, a militia blamed by America for the killing of its ambassador in the city in 2012.

Libya's new authorities are struggling to control the country. Opponents claim the election earlier this month of Ahmed Maiteeg, a businessman, as the new prime minister was fraudulent. Mr Maiteeg and his cabinet have yet to take office. The trigger for Mr Hiftar’s attack is unclear. But it came days after an intelligence chief was assassinated in Benghazi and after Jordan’s ambassador was released by kidnappers in Tripoli, apparently in exchange for a Libyan jailed in Amman for terrorist offences.

Libya's neighbours and allies are rattled. Tunisia has sent 5,000 troops to its border with Libya. Algerian special forces flew into Tripoli to evacuate their ambassador. Days earlier, the Pentagon had announced the deployment of 200 marines and vertical takeoff aircraft in Sicily as a contingency measure.

Mr Hiftar, who served as a general under Qaddafi before deserting and leaving to America in the 1980s, insists his attacks have support. He has vowed to crush the militias he describes as “terrorists”. Much will depend on whether his forces gain support among a public weary of three years of stagnation and violence.

_________________"Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee
"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth." - Buddha